Israeli journalist Nir Dvori of Channel 12 News reported on Thursday that the Hamas terrorists who perpetrated the October 7 atrocities against Israeli civilians were pumped up for the attack with Captagon, a synthetic stimulant sometimes called “cocaine for the poor” that was also favored by Islamic State jihadis.
According to the Channel 12 report, traces of Captagon were found both in Hamas prisoners captured by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and in those killed during the attack on October 7. The report quoted eyewitnesses who said bags of the drug were also found in Hamas vehicles.
Captagon, also known as Fenethylline, is manufactured in gigantic quantities in Syria and smuggled across the Middle East. The smuggling rings allegedly enjoy protection from Syrian officials who are cut in for a piece of the action, including powerful members of dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime and Syrian military officers.
A key figure in the Captagon drug empire is allegedly Assad’s brother Maher al-Assad, who commands an elite armored division in the Syrian Army. The Iran-backed Assad regime generates a considerable portion of its income for military expenditures by selling the drug.
The Captagon trade is such a huge problem in the Middle East that the Arab League made cracking down on the drug a major condition for welcoming Syria back into its ranks. Some Arab League members said they had no more serious grievance with Damascus than Captagon smuggling. The fact that Syria’s dictator can see the top kingpin in the drug syndicate by looking in a mirror was delicately underplayed by Arab League diplomats.
In December 2021, Lebanese customs officials discovered almost nine million Captagon tablets hidden inside a shipment of oranges bound for Kuwait. A week earlier, four men were arrested in Dubai for trying to bring millions of Captagon pills into the United Arab Emirates.
In December 2022, Jordanian authorities seized a metric ton of the drug smuggled inside date paste from Iraq. It was one of the largest drug seizures ever reported by the Jordanian Customs Department. The Captagon trade into Jordan is so lucrative that the smugglers have fought gun battles with the Jordanian military to protect their turf.
In March 2023, Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces thwarted a plot to smuggle Captagon and other drugs into the Batroun prison south of Tripoli, hidden inside sunflower seeds, and a larger-scale effort to slip 960,000 Captagon pills across the border.
Quite a bit of the Captagon trade flows through Lebanon – which, like Gaza, has a malfunctioning government dominated by an Iranian terrorist proxy, namely Hezbollah. A major center for the production of Captagon is the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, which is tightly controlled by Hezbollah.
Huge shipments of the drug bound for Qatar and Oman have been intercepted in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia actually imposed a ban on Lebanese fruits and vegetables in 2021 because so much of the produce had Captagon pills stashed inside it.
Captagon is an amphetamine-type stimulant that was originally formulated to treat disorders such as depression and ADD. It is a powerful and highly addictive stimulant noted for producing extreme aggression and psychotic behavior when taken in heavy doses, which is why terrorist organizations like to pump their soldiers full of it. ISIS is notorious not only for using Captagon as a combat drug, to make its soldiers “fearless” in battle, but also for selling pills to finance its activities.
Civilians in Middle Eastern conflict zones sometimes use the drug to stay awake and alert during times of violence, and it has recreational users as well. It earned the nickname “poor man’s cocaine” because pills can be purchased for less than a dollar.
The Gaza Anti-Narcotics Police Department – which, like most of Gaza’s dysfunctional government, is run by Hamas terrorists – reported seizing 50,000 Captagon tablets in February that were “hidden inside a shipment of goods imported to the Gaza Strip from Israel.”
“Israel prevents the importation of advanced screening devices into Gaza under the pretext of dual use, which forces us to rely on traditional tools, mainly manual inspection with the help of police dogs to examine and search goods coming from Kerem Shalom once they enter the enclave,” claimed anti-narcotics official Anwar Zo’rob.
“Israel insists on flooding our region with drugs to destroy our youths and contribute to spreading the crimes among the population,” Zo’rob charged.
In truth, if Iran-backed Hamas needs Captagon to juice up its murder squads until they are eager to decapitate babies, it need only ask the Iran-backed regime in Syria to ship some pills through the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists of Lebanon.
Tamar, Yonatan, and their children — Shachar (6), Arbel (6), and Omer (4) — were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Nir Oz. (@EladStr Twitter/X)
